NEW DELHI: On November 6 this year, the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport witnessed the highest air traffic movement ever, which was recorded to be 1,082. With the airport gearing up to enter the league of top ten busiest airports in Asia in near future, DIAL is planning to expand its terminal 1D to cater to the increasing number of passengers.

As the capacity of the domestic terminal is expected to shoot up from the existing 13 million to 30 million after the expansion, the master plan for the airport also talks about a fourth terminal and a fourth runway, which DIAL said will be put in place to deal with the traffic as per future requirements.

Spread over 5,100 acres, the IGIA, at present, has three runways operating simultaneously. "We even have recorded handling of over 75 flight movements in an hour, and recently raced out the Mumbai airport in handling of large number of passengers and air traffic movements," said a DIAL spokesperson.

According to DIAL, during the peak hours, the number of flight movements has even crossed 75, with the airport having a capacity of handling around 85 flights in one hour.

Spread over 5,100 acres, the IGIA, at present, has three runways operating simultaneously.

Certain measures that have been put in place to tackle the increasing passenger traffic are installing additional machines for security check, increase in frisking points, new kiosks for passengers for self check-in, enhanced seating capacity at the terminal and more airport personnel to assist passengers.

To deal with the shooting air traffic, the airport operators said certain measures allow them to reduce the dis tance between the aircraft in sequence for landing and takeoffs. This gives them more time to handle any increase in the air traffic movement. Runway Utilisation Improvement Programme for reduction of runway occupancy time and better coordination between pilots and the air traffic controllers is one of the recent measures in place. Under this, the air traffic controllers do not have to explain the entire route to every pilot flying from the airport.

"With this, aircraft have been mandated to land only on the allotted runways and pilots are directed by the ATC officials to take route one, two or three and so on, rather than directing them to the taxiways to reach their allotted parking bay ," the spokesperson said.